The Empathic Brain

By Christian Keysers
$2.99 Rating: Not yet rated.
Published: June 21, 2011
Words: 82,515 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9789090262536

Short description

The discovery of mirror neurons caused unparalleled excitement amongst scientists. The Empathic Brain makes you share this excitement. Its vivid descriptions of experiments make it a captivating read. Through intellectually rigorous but powerfully accessible prose, Prof. Keysers makes us realize just how deeply this discovery changes our understanding of human nature.

Extended description

In Brief
The discovery of mirror neurons has caused an unparalleled wave of excitement amongst scientists. The Empathic Brain makes you share this excitement. Its vivid and personal descriptions of key experiments make it a captivating and refreshing read. Through intellectually rigorous but powerfully accessible prose, Prof. Christian Keysers makes us realize just how deeply this discovery changes our understanding of human nature. You will start looking at yourselves differently - no longer as mere individual but as a deeply interconnected, social mind.

About the Content
----------------- (Read more) In Brief
The discovery of mirror neurons has caused an unparalleled wave of excitement amongst scientists. The Empathic Brain makes you share this excitement. Its vivid and personal descriptions of key experiments make it a captivating and refreshing read. Through intellectually rigorous but powerfully accessible prose, Prof. Christian Keysers makes us realize just how deeply this discovery changes our understanding of human nature. You will start looking at yourselves differently - no longer as mere individual but as a deeply interconnected, social mind.

About the Content
-----------------
Your heart beats faster as you watch a tarantula crawl on James Bond’s chest in the movie Dr No, your hands sweat and your skin tingles under the spider’s legs. You feel scared, tense, and finally relieved when Bond manages to escape the danger. We are essentially empathic. But what is empathy? How does your brain enable you to feel so much of what 007 is feeling? How do you connect with people in real life, people you love or even strangers? In this book, you will visit leading labs to find your own answers. The journey starts where ‘mirror neurons’ were discovered. The door of a lab in Parma, Italy, opens to reveal that your motor system not only controls your own body - it becomes automatically activated each time you see others move. A little later, you lie down on a bed and slowly move into the bore of a brain scanner in Marseille, becoming a subject in an experiment that will show how your own sensations and emotions are automatically triggered while you witness those of others. These experiments unravel the mirror in our brain that lets our own actions, sensations and emotions resonate with those of Bond and the people around us. By sharing their inner lives, we connect with them. We are hard-wired for empathy. By looking at autistic individuals and psychopathic criminals, by comparing men and women, by exploring empathy for robots and enemies, this book explores the multifaceted nature of empathy and evidences both its power and limits. Science begins to reveal the wisdom of why so many of the world’s religions command “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

About the Author
----------------
Christian Keysers’ work has been seminal for the scientific study of empathy. Born in 1973, his work has led to publications in the most prominent scientific journals and has made him one of the youngest people to attain the rank of Full Professor. His capacity to explain his science to the wider audience earned him the Marie Curie Excellence Award. He now leads a lab together with his wife at the prestigious Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. He is a Full Professor at the UMCG and a frequent Visiting Professor at the California Institute of Technology. Outside of the laboratory, his wife Valeria and his daughter Julia are teaching him why empathy is such a gift.
(Less)

Tags

emotion, autism, mind reading, perception, psychopathy, neuroscience, empathy, sociopathy, brain science, mirror neurons, theory of mind, mentalizing

Available ebook reading formats

Single purchase gains access to all formats. How to download ebooks to e-reading devices and apps.

Format	Full Book	Sample First 20%
Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)	Buy	View sample
Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)	Buy	Download sample
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)	Buy	Download sample
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)	Buy	No sample available
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Buy	No sample available
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)	Buy	Download sample
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Buy	Download sample
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)	Buy	No sample available
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)	Buy	No sample available

Reviews

Log-in to write a Review   Log-in to add a Video Review

This book has not yet been reviewed.

Reason for report:
— Select a reason — Book is or contains spam Book infringes copyright Same content is published elsewhere with different author (for ex., by private-label rights) Duplicate Incomplete work (such as sample or serial) Should be marked adults-only Category is inappropriate Poorly formatted Nudity or other inappropriate content on cover Nudity or other inappropriate visual content in book Inappropriate erotica content Cover image is improper Content is inappropriate Other violation of Terms of Service Other reason not shown above.

Additional details: